


Never Spent

by LadyKes



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 09:29:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8008096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyKes/pseuds/LadyKes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hathaway contemplates nature and nature - a cactus and Robbie Lewis', specifically.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Spent

**Author's Note:**

> And for all this, nature is never spent - Gerard Manley Hopkins, "God's Grandeur"

He’d killed Jean Innocent.

Fortunately, he’d killed Jean Innocent the cactus rather than Jean Innocent the person. Better for all concerned that way. Well, perhaps not better for the cactus.

Jean Innocent the person had left the cactus to him as a goodbye gift when she swanned off to greener, less cacti-filled pastures, and he was still trying to decide exactly what message she and the cactus were meant to be sending. He was prickly? Certainly. One only had to ask Nell or the nurses at his father’s care home to know that. He required little care? Perhaps not. Lewis had accused him of being high-maintenance more than once. He grew slowly? Probably, although his growth had been tending outward rather than upward for some years now. He was green? Not generally, although the effects of a bad kebab last year had been an exception.

Maybe it meant nothing other than that she wanted to get rid of the plant, and maybe it didn’t matter now anyway. The green columns had turned brown and started to look like they’d developed a skin condition a few weeks ago. He’d failed to water it, of course, then and now. “Forgotten” absolved him of far too much. “Failed” was correct. He’d failed at many things in life. Failed to become a priest, failed to become a respectable son and brother, failed to quit smoking, failed to make anything resembling even a sideline musical career, and failed to become a copper that had any significant chance at rising higher than he was now. He’d never have a subordinate, facetious Detective Inspector to whom he might give a parting cactus.

The long list of his failures was enough to keep him up at night, if he was inclined to dwell on such things (and he usually was). For now, though, he ought to just toss the cactus and reuse the space on his desk. There were always more manuals to be cursorily perused whenever someone really official was coming by and he needed to look as if he was working exceedingly hard. He approached the plant with the intention of replacing it with “CyberSecurity Guidelines Volume III of IX” but was surprised to see a tiny, bright green bud poking out from one of the leprous columns.

“Maddox,” he called to his sergeant, and she popped her head round the door a few seconds later.

“Have you been watering the cactus?” he asked neutrally. He didn’t wish to seem to accuse, after all. 

“Lewis reminded me to, sir,” she replied with a smile. “He said someone’s got to take care of CS Innocent.”

James hadn’t know that Lewis knew what he’d named the cactus, but of course he had. He always did know James better than James trusted he might.

“Thank you,” he said simply to Maddox, and she nodded before heading back to her desk.

Nature was never spent, and neither was the endless capacity of Robbie Lewis to care about everyone around him.

James and Jean Innocent (cactus and person) were glad to be a live in a world with people like him.


End file.
